IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 156

YES, HE is Talking to YOU! (continued)

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil. And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good? (1 Peter 3:12-13). This was the Quote of the Day for yesterday and since yesterday’s post went so long we will address it and its relationship to what we are discussing here. Peter says this to the believers that he writes to after giving some instruction on how they should act as followers of the Lord. In this saying he is telling us that the eyes and the ears of the Lord are ever attentive to the doings and the solicitations of the righteous and we should see this in two ways. First, as the apostle tells us for to be righteous is to walk in the ways of the Lord and in this way His power and His grace is always with us. Secondly, it says to us that when we are truly righteous and following in the ways of the Lord that we are focused on His kingdom and in this focus we bring into our conscious personality the Light of the Soul and the potency of the Christ Within. Last, Peter asks us a question: who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good? and we can extend this thought to our subject parable. With our focus on the Lord and our attention on the higher pole of Love, we live and move in the higher energies of God and not on the lower pole of fear where would dwell the powers and the forces that many call Satan and the devil and his demons. These lower forces take their toll and waste lives through the delusions of the flesh in the illusion of carnal living; the harm is that those trapped by these forces never take the time to attend to what is really the important part of an incarnated life on Earth which is to approach the Presence of God.

The Master tells us this in these words from the Gospel of John: “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). Most all of His teachings say this same thing and in so many different ways. We are Spirit beings living through bodies of flesh as conscious personalities; the Spirit is the Life and is what matters; it is our goal and our objective to allow as much of this Life to come through during our time in flesh as we can possibly accomplish and this is done through focus on the things above and not on those below. In His words are Life and He tells us that they are Life and in following, in being doers of His word, we attain to His Presence and are accounted worthy for His Kingdom.

Getting back to our text; we left off yesterday attempting to explain the Master’s saying regarding the strong man and the even stronger man. We discounted the idea that the strong man was Satan and the stronger man Christ on the grounds that the whole idea of Satan as a personality are unfounded and the result of superstition and legend and myth. We discounted also that the story is a general illustration of what can happen in life when a strong man loses what he has to one stronger. We settled on an idea that falls in line with our basic premises of the Life of man as a Spirit and a Soul saying that the strong man is the carnal man, confident in his life in flesh and the stronger man is the Inner Man, the Christ Within. It is then the battle between the lower forces that drive the carnal and selfish man to be carnal and selfish versus the higher forces of the Christ Within; we likened this to a conflict between Love and fear. Love representing the Christ and the Presence of God and fear representing Satan and the presence of evil. We laid the foundation for this in the previous posts by examining the nature of the dark forces that Paul calls for us principalities and powers and which our reference texts tell us can be either on the good side or the bad.

We move on now to the next saying in this series and another that is difficult to understand in general and in the context that it is given. The Master says: “He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth” (Luke 11:23, Matthew 12:30). This is a difficult saying in the context in which it appears and to make it more complex there is another like it in the Gospel of Mark and elsewhere in Luke’s Gospel which appears at the outset contrary to this. The Master says this regarding the disciples telling Him of another who was doing work in Jesus name but did not follow with them: “Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is on our part” (Mark 9:39-40)

In the combination of these sayings we should be able to see the reality of the Master’s point but how do we place it into the context of the setting and the verses that precede it an come next? For those who attribute this all the to Satan, this is likely an easier task which is just to say that Satan is not with Jesus and therefore against Him. However, since we have discounted this idea we cannot go in this direction. Let us develop then a generalized meaning for the saying and perhaps in doing so we can find a way to relate this to the context. It is rather clear that the Master is telling those listening that any of them that are not with Him are against Him and from this we need only to understand the idea of with. This is such a simple word, a preposition, that Vines does not mention it and Vincent skips this verse in both Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels. The translation, from the Greek word meta, can carry a number of unrelated meanings; the lexicon says that meta means: with, after, behind² while Strong’s says that it refers to with, among, a marker of associations of various kinds of meanings; (acc.) after, later, a marker of time (goes on there to reference combinations with other words), to, unto, upon, when, along with additional combinations with other words.³ So with all this it is difficult to understand the direct meaning of this word as the master intended. Looking at our own usage in life we can see the multiplicity of ideas that can be afforded by it from being with someone to being WITH someone. Or, the question are you with me can carry us from a casual occurrence such as going to a place together to acts of rebellion and protest all depending on the context of are you with me or ARE YOU WITH ME.

Now many translations and commentaries tend to just put this as with in an actual sense of mentally holding Christ as the Saviour and Redeemer as this fuels the Christian idea that you must be a Christian and with Christ. Some of the newer translations however do say some different things; for example:

• The Good News Translation: “Anyone who is not for me is really against me; anyone who does not help me gather is really scattering“.
• New Living Translation: “Anyone who isn’t helping me opposes me, and anyone who isn’t working with me is actually working against me“.
• The Message: “This is war, and there is no neutral ground. If you’re not on my side, you’re the enemy; if you’re not helping, you’re making things worse”.

Can we get from this the idea that the Master was tending more to saying that if you are not following Me, following My teachings and My words as His emphasis on for the word with. Some of the commentary alludes to the idea that there is a choice between being with the Master or with Satan and this can work as an explanation for those that believe that there is a being who rules over the Earth. But for us it is better to find the deeper meaning that exists in the idea of following after the Master for if we do this, follow Him and His teachings and His word, then it is rather impossible to be following the lower forces that are called by the name of Satan. And look here too at the idea of against Him; if one is following the carnal life and not following the Master’s teachings then this is against Him. It does not say here that against is in any way an act of violence it is however against what He teaches and stands for. Taking this idea with the entry from the Gospel of Mark above we see that the Master is telling John that if someone is doing His work and keeping His word, that this person is not against Him but is for Him which takes this same idea from above in reverse. So to be with is to follow Him; to do the words of the Master or as James tells us to “be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22).

Next is the idea of gathering and scattering; there is no reference here to what it is that one is to gather nor what it means to be scattering if one is not gathering. Gathereth is translated from the Greek word sunago of which Strong’s says: to gather together, assemble; invite, call together³. Vine’s relates it to assemble, bestow, come and resort⁶ while the lexicon tells us that it is translated as assemble 1, assembled 5, came together 1, convened 1, gather 10, gather…together 2, gather together 1, gathered 9, gathered…together 3, gathered together 14, gathered…together 1, gathering 3, gathering together 1, invite 2, invited 1, met 2, store 2 ². Here again we have a very versatile word with many implications as to meaning. Let us look at the next word that is translated scattereth and which is from the Greek word skorpizo. This word is used but four times in the Gospels and is oddly framed in the lexicon which says: to scatter; of those who, routed or terror stricken or driven by some other impulses, fly in every direction ; to scatter abroad (what others may collect for themselves), or one dispensing blessings literally². Strong’s gives us simply to scatter, disperse³ as does Vine’s⁶.

What is it then that is gathered and scattered? Gathered is used in many places in the gosples but most always with an idea of what is being gathered. Here, it is likely that this is a reiteration of the previous saying relating being with Him to gathering and being against Him to scattering. The Apostle John can help us here; He tells us that the Master said “And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together” (John 4:36). Now this is an interesting point; Jesus says these words while explaining to His disciples that the harvest (of men)  is great and He replies that those harvesting are those that reapeth and the wages are “gathereth fruit unto life eternal“. On the idea of scattered we can also go to John for some help. The Master uses this twice in John’s Gospel; once in relation to the scattering of sheep when the shepherd is not there and the hireling flees at the sign of the wolf: “But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming , and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth : and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep” (John 10:12). And again in relation to the disciples being scattered when the Master is taken by the Jews: “Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me” (John 16:32). There are other Greek words that are translated as scatter and this one is only used in these two verses from John and in the two subject verses above from Matthew and Luke.

Tying this all together we can say here that the ideas from John give some strength to our ready premise that there is a lesson of value in the Master’s words and His choice of words. Some may think that the idea of gathering is to bring people to the Lord and to the Church and in not doing this one is doing the opposite in scattering. The Masters reference above for this type of gathering is that it is reaping and we see how He relegates the gathering to “fruit unto life eternal” and this is the way we will look at it. Being with Him or following Him is then equivalent to this gathering of fruit for eternal life. Going further to scattereth we should take the message from above that without the Master or without the Christ Within in our lives it is we who are scattered into the world of carnal living or back into it. Here the idea of against, as we say above, is equivalent to not following Him and being scattered is not having Him in our lives.

It may seem that we are spending much time on these few verses and this may be so but these are important parts of the Master’s teaching and parts that are often misinterpreted and misunderstood. Another reason for the importance in these verses and their counterparts in Matthew and Mark is the idea that follows next in both of these but does not follow in Luke until the next chapter and this is the idea of the unpardonable sin. It is ill defined and taken to mean that one can be lost forever for saying a thing. We will continue our discussion on these things in the next post.

Note on the Quote of the Day